Nest (20 page)

She was doing damage in her back now; she could feel it. She turned herself around, so as to push backwards, in the hope that using different muscles would give her enough leverage.
The birds had gone quiet. What breeze there was had stilled. ‘One, two,
three
.’

She was superhuman, roaring with strength, inching the mower – all five hundred kilograms – up and across the slope. And then her boot slipped on a spray of gravel and all that weight came back at her. She rolled out of the way and watched the mower crash back into the gutter, out the other side and down the slope, crunching into a log.

‘Fuck!’

She lay on the ground, staring up at the sky through the leaves of the bloodwood. She had all sorts of tricks, to turn the world into patterns and shapes and shades. A type of seeing that required a relaxing of focus, forgetting what you knew. In this case, forgetting about the damn mower and the pain that was coming when she stood up.

The birds hopped and sang and flitted in the leaf light, oblivious to her ‘epic fail,’ as Henry would call it. Light in the canopy had been one of her favourite subjects for a time, seeking to see what the birds saw, a world of dappled shades and whispering breezes, a bounty of insect life.

For all her years of striving to see like a bird, be like a bird, in the end she was only a lumpy human. And not an especially gifted one at that. She was barely coping on the ground, let alone going to fly, and there was nothing as sad as a bird without wings.

G
len knocked while she was still having breakfast. She hobbled to the door, tying her bathrobe more securely about her.

‘Morning.’

‘Hey.’

‘Saw the mower,’ he said. ‘You’re lucky you didn’t kill yourself!’

‘I’ll just get dressed.’

‘Righto. See you up there.’

She tipped out her tea, put the plate and cup in the sink and picked up her work clothes from the laundry. They were rather ripe, after resting in sweat and petrol fumes overnight.

It hurt to bend, to put her arm through her shirtsleeve, and she struggled to do up her buttons. Everything hurt – particularly her pride. She leaned on the front door to slide on her boots. This was what it must feel like to be
really
old.

She walked up the steps and the driveway, to where Glen was standing.

‘You all right?’ he said. ‘Did you come off it?’

She shook her head.

‘Brakes not much use on a slope like that.’

‘No.’

‘Gotta keep across the grain,’ he said. ‘Opposite to wood.’

She smiled.

‘Righto. I’ve hooked up the tow rope. I think the ute will manage. I’ll go nice and easy – you right to steer the beast?’

‘Sure.’

‘Don’t hop on, mind. Just kinda walk beside it. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘I’m going to pull it right up to the top of the drive, then you can drive it across, back onto the lawn.’

‘Sounds good.’

She slid more than walked down the slope, wet after last night’s rain, and waited by the wretched machine till the rope went taut. For a moment it looked as if there was no shifting it, then it was crawling back the way it had come. She adjusted the wheel, took note of the plants snapped off en route.

When it came to the ditch, it needed an extra push from her to get through. She used her body rather than her arms, which were without any strength at all.

At the top of the drive Glen stopped, leaned out the open window. ‘Righto. On you get. Just whack it in low and drive across there.’

Jen swallowed. Breathed. The kookaburras were watching from the bloodwood. Five of them this time. Word of human entertainment had got out. They had the decorum to be quiet at least. She put on the handbrake, turned the key. Gave it some choke. It started, with a great chug of smoke. She put the thing into low gear and released the handbrake, reassuring herself she could not roll backwards while secured to Glen by the rope.
Forward it went. Eagerly even, as if it had not done everything it could to go in the other direction only yesterday. She parked it under the orange tree and cut the engine.

Glen’s knot wasn’t hard to untie, so at least she could hand him the end of the rope by the time he strolled down, winding it over his arm. ‘Piece of piss,’ he said.

‘Thank you.’

‘Must have given you a bit of a fright.’

‘You could say that,’ she said. ‘Thought it was going to end up in the creek.’

He bent to look at the guard surrounding the blades, smashed in from its cross-country travels. ‘Might have to bang this out,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some tools with me. Could give it a go if you like?’

‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘You’ve done enough.’

‘Won’t take a minute,’ he said, already on his way back to the ute.

That was another trait of the men of the place, they didn’t take no for an answer. Not always a bad thing.

He banged and twisted, sending the kookaburras further afield to seek their laughs, or morning tea, perhaps. ‘That should do it,’ he said. ‘But your blades might be a bit the worse for wear.’

‘It’s due a service soon anyway.’

‘Where do you take it?’

‘The dealership come out.’

‘Bloke in town, the mower repair place, is probably cheaper. They’ll come and get it. Or I could take it in for you. Got a ramp – just drive it onto the back of the ute. Not a big deal at all.’

She didn’t fancy driving it up onto the ute, but he was being very sweet. ‘Thank you.’

They stood with their faces up to the sun. ‘Things have gone awful quiet about the Jones girl,’ he said.

‘It’s not a good feeling.’ Not a good feeling to have again. ‘Can I make you a cup of tea?’

‘Wouldn’t say no.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll just put all this back in the ute and get my phone. Me and Sam have a job on this morning, if it’s not too wet.’

He took off his boots at the door – the difference between the last generation and this one. ‘Nice place,’ he said.

‘Thanks.’

‘These all yours?’

She nodded.

‘Geez, Jen. They’re real good.’ He peered at one of her tree series. Probably a bit abstract for his liking. ‘Love this quandong,’ he said. ‘They do kind of reach for the sky like that. And their red leaves could be on fire.’

Jen smiled, turned to tap the old tea-leaves into the compost bucket. ‘So what’s this job you and Sam are hoping will be on today?’

‘Not one you’d like. Taking out some trees for the power company. Too close to the lines, they reckon. Pile of crap, but they’re going to pay someone to do it. And we get some good timber that way.’

‘How is it working for Sam?’

‘The old man’s all right.’ He stirred two sugars into his tea. ‘I gather he was more of a hard case in his younger days. He was competing with two other mills then.’

‘He seemed a little scary, but I was only small.’

He laughed. ‘He was fond of you. And your dad. Helped your mother out, too, when your dad …’

‘Took off?’

‘Yeah.’

She offered him a biscuit, shortbreads left over from Henry’s last visit. ‘What do you mean helped out?’

‘Financially,’ he said. ‘And popped down to check on her from time to time. Fix things. Said he owed it to her.’

Jen sipped her tea. A little too strong, the tannin biting her teeth. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Don’t know. I gather he didn’t pay those blokes any more than he needed to. And they never had super or insurance or anything in those days.’

‘True.’

‘Your mum didn’t mention it?’

‘No. But there were a lot of things we didn’t talk about.’ Probably she had been protecting Jen when she was a child and, later, protecting herself.

Glen’s phone rang, his ringtone a tinny rendition of a familiar seventies tune. ‘Yep. On my way.’

‘Job’s on?’

He swallowed a mouthful of his tea. ‘Job’s on.’

J
en recognised it from its call, a grating chuffing – like a bird playing a comb – and looked up from her planting to confirm. A spectacled monarch, egg-yellow chest, dark face mask, its smaller mate answering its call.

The last of the native frangipanis were in, and she was almost out of lomandra. She had gone a bit overboard at the nursery, leaving herself short for groceries, but the slope down from the house was going to look fantastic. A vast improvement on her old view of lantana.

She heard a car door open and slam, then running footsteps down to the house.

‘Jen?’

‘I’m out the back, Henry.’ She washed her hands under the garden tap.

He was inside before he could possibly have removed his shoes properly, and the spectacled monarchs fled the scene.

‘I won!’

‘The art prize?’

‘FIRST in my age group,’ he said. ‘And highly commended in the open section.’

Jen dried her hands on her shirt. ‘For Caitlin’s portrait?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well done!’ she said. ‘Told you it was good.’ She patted him on the shoulder. ‘Lucky I made chocolate cake. Must have had a feeling.’

Henry grinned and began spreading his gear all over the table. And so an artist was made.

Jen fired up the gas and cut cake. ‘Tea?’

‘Yes, please.’

Shame he was too young for champagne; she had a bottle in the fridge that had been waiting some time for something to celebrate.

‘What happened to your mixmaster?’

She had left it outside to soak. ‘I was mixing paint in it.’

‘How’d you make the cake?’

‘I have beaters for that,’ she said.

‘You want me to finish the forest painting?’

‘That’s why it’s there.’

He sighed. A comedown from prize-winning, no doubt.

She carried out his tea and cake, spilling over the sides of the little plate.

Henry was splotching on the paint a little too casually.

‘You know, I met some people once who spent their whole careers, their lives, really, studying forest canopies.’

Henry gave her his sceptical look and filled his mouth with cake.

‘What percentage of species would you guess is located in the treetops?’

‘Twenty,’ he said, spraying crumbs.

‘Fifty,’ she said.

That earned her a raised eyebrow, a pause of the brush. ‘What, like animals?’

‘Plants and animals. That includes rainforests. There’s a lot going on upstairs there. Insects and reptiles and mosses and fungi and epiphytes.’

‘And birds,’ he said.

She smiled. ‘Yes, and birds.’

‘Why are jungle birds so bright?’

‘Is this a joke you heard?’ She didn’t do jokes, especially about birds.

‘I’m serious,’ he said. ‘Why are tropical birds so big and colourful? With big beaks?’

‘Like toucans and macaws?’

‘Like Long John Silver has.’

‘Well, I guess there’s a lot of competition in the jungle, all that colour and life. And the male birds have to work harder to get the females’ attention. Our tropical parrots are bright, too, if you think about it.’

‘Not blue, with striped beaks.’

She smiled. It was nice to have someone to talk to about birds.

I
t was time to ask some questions of Aunt Sophie. Jen was overdue a visit anyway, and a long drive was just what she needed to clear her head.

Her aunt had never seemed as sympathetic as everyone else towards her mother, perhaps because she had been the one who had to pick up the pieces. Whenever her mother had let her down – a visit had fallen through, or money for something – her aunt had shaken her head and looked unimpressed. Also unsurprised. Perhaps it began earlier, in their childhoods. Jen couldn’t pretend to understand what it was to be a sister.

At the time, she would have preferred an explanation, something spoken out loud, spelled out. She had thought herself mature enough to be treated like an adult, to handle any information. She appreciated now, having worked with children herself, that Aunt Sophie thought she had enough to deal with. She had put Jen’s interests before her own, which was what parents were supposed to do, and more than either of hers had managed.

Aunt Sophie seemed more frail, smaller in her house. Jen had put off coming for too long. ‘You still walking?’

‘Every morning,’ Aunt Sophie said. ‘And swimming. Though not without a hat. Doctor’s orders.’

Aunt Sophie had had many skin cancers burned off her face and arms, the legacy of a life spent in the water. ‘Good,’ Jen said. ‘I’m glad you’re listening for a change.’

‘Well, it’s all too late now,’ her aunt said. ‘For the wrinkles, too.’

Jen smiled. ‘Better late than never,’ she said. ‘You always made me cover up. It didn’t escape my notice that you weren’t adhering to your own advice.’

‘Most damage is done when you’re young,’ Aunt Sophie said.

‘That’s very true.’

‘So tell me how you’ve been.’

‘I’m well,’ Jen said. ‘I’ve got a little show coming up.’

‘That’s great,’ Aunt Sophie said. ‘Where?’

‘Just on the coast, but it’s a retrospective.’

‘Oooh,’ she said. ‘They’ll love you. And the teaching?’

‘Tutoring. Just one boy,’ she said. ‘But I quite like that.’

Her aunt spooned tea into a pot. ‘When’s the show? Maybe I can come.’